Community-led Climate Action that Fosters Girls, Bees and Biodiversity
Through the Ban-Ki Moon Centre for Global Citizens, our Program Lead Priscah Mongera was nominated out of hundreds of changemakers for the top 30 Under 30 EVWA (Elevating Voices of Women In Agriculture) Change Makers 2022 for the BE(E) The Change Project with our Mommas On Fire. We are empowering mothers to teach the wider community about beekeeping, the environment and biodiversity, including together with the youth will reforest (plant native trees) in a nearby forest that’s experienced degradation. It is through our intersectional approach that we are able to make a significant impact on girls’ education, women’s economic empowerment, food security and climate change, in both service implementation and influencing policy change. The top down, siloed approaches to social and enironmental change do not work and excluding the people most affected by the climate crisis, women and girls in the global south, is having devastating outcomes.
The Ban-Ki Moon Centre has recognized this and have highlighted grassroots organizations that can help achieve Sustainable Development Goal 13 the “urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” and the long-term positive outcomes of other SDGs that are interlinked. It has been studied for a decade that accelerating girls’ education is more effective than any greenhouse technologies, according to the leader in research Project Drawdown. Moreover the cascading effect on achieving SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 2 (food security), SDG 3 (health + well-being) are undeniable.
SDG 13 states that we must act quickly to combat climate change and its effects. The third target aims to raise awareness about climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning while also enhancing institutional and human capabilities.
Kenya is regarded as a high-risk climate nation due to its fragility, dangers, and lack of coping mechanisms. Droughts with frequent and sudden onset have been fatal. According to a recent report (July-September 2022) by IPC, 29% (equivalent to 4.4 million) of the population are facing high levels of acute food insecurity. Drought has caused food insecurity, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, and has been reported in more than three-quarters of Kenya’s counties with deaths reported in the northern parts of the Rift Valley, North Eastern, and coastal regions. Key drivers of food insecurity have been poor rains, poor production, soil degradation and high food prices.
In order to meet the demands of the present and future generations, Kenya has a larger need to safeguard the environment from degradation through sustainable production and consumption, responsible management of its natural resources, and swift action on climate change.
Girls on Fire leaders organization currently works in Kwale, a region that comprises 83% of arid and semi-arid land that has an economy that is reliant on rain-fed agriculture; vulnerable to extreme droughts exacerbated by climate change and marine life and fishing. This region has high rates of extreme poverty, malnutrition, girls out of school, sexual exploitation, and child marriage. We understand the magnitude that climate change has on the access to quality education for girls already living in extreme poverty in a broken social system and the urgent climate crisis that puts young girls in the fields rather than classrooms.
Recently, we birthed Mommas on Fire CBO to inspire, teach, mentor, and cultivate entrepreneurship in mothers determined to be thriving beekeepers, and farmers and gain the ability to educate over 500 village girls in the next 5 years who will step into community leadership and uphold multi-generational environmental conservationism. This is a concerted effort toward mitigating environmental degradation along the coastline, offering an alternative source of livelihood as mothers are the worst hit when we are in an environmental crisis.
With the global recognition of the Ban-Ki Moon Centre for Global Citizens Top 30 Under 30 EVWA Change Makers 2022, we hope to shine a light on grassroot women leaders that are working with what they know in agriculture to advance social, economic and envirnmental change and will be represented to world leaders in the upcoming COP27.
